Finite mind

“ The mental creations held by You and I, and other finite minds, are but finite creations of finite minds, while WE, ourselves, are the finite creations of an INFINITE MIND. While our, and Dickens', and Balzac's, and Shakespeare's creations live and move and have their being, they have no other "I" than our Finite Minds, while we, the characters in the Divine Drama, Story, or Epic, have for our "I"—our Real Self—the ABSOLUTE REALITY. They have merely a background of our finite personalities, and minds, before which they may desport themselves. ”

“ Here we must remember that we have before us, not the infinite mind, but the finite. The finite mind is that which only becomes active through the passive, only arrives at the absolute through limitation, and only acts and fashions in as far as it receives matter. Accordingly, a mind of this nature must associate with the impulse towards form or the absolute, an impulse towards matter or limitation, conditions without which it could not have the former impulse nor satisfy it. ”

“ Alternate expansion and condensation, abandonment and recovery of self, the conquest of the world to be pursued on the one side, the deepening of consciousness on the other—such is the play of the inner life, the march of the microcosmic mind, the marriage of the individual soul with the universal soul, the finite with the infinite, whence springs the intellectual progress of man. ”

“ When we are cognizant of limitations of time and sense, of physical conditions, of anything finite or even of ourselves as something other than deity or mind or universal reality or as some finite limitation of it we are in an imperfect state of mind or of character. Therefore, freeing ourselves from these notions or delusion and understanding the unity, infinity and identity of reality, ourselves included, is the highest blessedness, the greatest good, the end of existence. ”

“ It limits all things, and would compress Mind, which is infinite, beneath a skull-bone. Such belief can neither apprehend nor worship the Infinite, and seeks to divide the one Spirit into many, to accommodate its finite sense of the divisibility of soul and substance. ”

“ But when we have asserted, as we have now done, that every moment of every finite consciousness has some unique character, and when we have asserted, as we have also done, that in our rational life our momentary will and its finite expression belong to this very unique aspect of our finite life, we have indeed found, in our finite will, an aspect which no causation could ever by any possibility explain. ”

“ For from our point of view, the Other, the completion that our finite being seeks, is not merely something beyond the present, and is not merely a future experience, but is also inclusive of the very process of the striving itself. For the goal of every finite life is simply the totality whereof this life, in its finitude, is a fragment. When I seek my own goal, I am looking for the whole of myself. ”

“ Yea, I know very well that the idea of an act, of a special act of consciousness, applies only to me but not to thee, the Infinite. Thou willest, because thou willest, that my free obedience shall have consequences in all eternity. The act of thy will I cannot comprehend; I only know that it is not like to mine. Thou doest, and thy will itself is deed. But thy method of action is directly contrary to that of which, alone, I can form a conception. Thou livest and art, for thou knowest, and willest, and workest, omnipresent to finite Reason. ”

“ If a vision was granted to you, if you saw, beforehand, what would be in the future, and if now the vision is followed by what is, or appears to be, a reality, is that any reason why your strength and presence of mind should desert you?' A pause, and then, answering the thought of his heart, the voice went on, 'Fate! That is true. Everything is fate. But our resistances are predicted and foreseen as well as our trials. Arise and be of good cheer. ”

“ You will, in all your life thereafter, never believe to know more than that you are finite, and finite in this determined manner, which you must explain to yourself, by the existence of such a determined world ”

“ Hence, — and here, indeed, is the conclusion of the whole matter, — the very effort hypothetically to assert that the whole world of experience is a world of fragmentary and finite experience is an effort involving a contradiction. ”

“ So soon as we reflect upon the activity of the Ego, the Ego is necessarily finite; so soon as the Ego is conscious of its finitude, it is conscious of striving beyond these limits, and so of its infinitude. Were the question raised, Is the Ego, then, infinite? the Ego, by the very question, is finite. Is the Ego finite? ”

“ If this be true, then the total limitation, the determination, the fragmentariness, the ignorance, the error, — yes (as forms or cases of ignorance and error) , the evil, the pain, the horror, the longing, the travail, the faith, the devotion, the endless flight from its own worthlessness, — that constitutes the very essence of the world of finite experience, is, as a positive reality, somewhere so experienced in its wholeness that this entire constitution of the finite appears as a world beyond which, in its whole constitution, nothing exists or can exist. ”

“ To deny the will of the infinite, that is to say, God, is impossible without denying the infinite. This we have demonstrated.
The denial of the infinite leads straight to nihilism. Everything becomes "a conception of the mind." ”

“ Our infinite model would be taken away. What is in Eternal Mind must be reflected in man, Mind's image. How then could man escape, or hope to escape, from a knowledge which is everlasting in his Creator? ”

“ Conclusions about the world had subtly assembled in the back of his brain in the course of his life, conclusions repudiated at other times for the need to think positively and to make the world his home for lack of a choice of another, slipped through barriers of his mind to the forefront of his brain. ”

“ But the finite, just because its very nature as finite is to aspire to a perfection which is out of reach, must have its experience marked with the distinction of now from by and by, of desire from performance. In this temporal character of all finite experience we may perhaps afterwards discern the ultimate ground of morality, as we can already discern in the unresting struggle of the finite to overcome its finitude, practical evidence that time is not a form which adequately expresses the nature of Reality, and must therefore be imperfect appearance. ”

“ Thus we may see from the side alike of cognition and of will how the whole life of the finite being forms a constant endeavour to widen experience into the complete apprehension of a content which, because infinite, could not be apprehended without the disappearance of finitude itself. ”

“ When, in the first section of this paper, we interpreted the implications of finite experience, and found that, in order to avoid contradiction, all finite experience must be regarded as a fragment of a whole, whose content is present in the unity of consciousness of one absolute moment, — in all this we did not assert that the contents of finite experience need an external cause, or that the Absolute is the cause of the relative. ”

“ Does not the soul either go back to the one source from which it sprung, and become a part of the whole, or does it not throw off its material environment and continue with individual consciousness to work out its final destiny? ”

“ We agree that the end is not a ‘thing-in-itself,’ is not Heaven knows what or where, but is the end for us as men, τἀνθρώπινον ἀγαθόν; and therefore we refuse to find it in that element of the mind which is least distinctively human, and shared with us by the beasts that perish. ”

“ For perceive me, fair and gentle lord, as this base body of ours being altogether thing material is also thing corruptible, so is it also a thing finite, and as it is a thing finite so are its sensations, be they of pleasure or pain, finite also—therefore soon must end. ”

“ Through toil, struggle, and sorrow, it arrives at understanding when the belief gives up its dead, even the illusion of life in matter, and this supposed mortal man returns to the ground, the oblivion of nothingness, and the supposition that error is mind is proved an illusion, and the great Truth that Mind is God, and there is but one Mind, is found out. ”

“ In metaphysics, in phrenology, in animal magnetism, in electricity, in chemistry, the tendency is the same, even when conclusions seem most dissonant. The mind presses nearer home to the seat of consciousness the more intimate law and rule of life, and old limits, become fluid beneath the fire of thought. ”

“ And such pursuit demands, as an essential part or aspect of the striving in question, a consciousness that agrees in its most essential respect with our own experience of time Hence, our only way of expressing the general structure of our idealistic realm of Being is to say that wherever an idea exists as a finite idea, still in pursuit of its goal, there appears to be some essentially temporal aspect belonging to the consciousness in question. ”

“ And finally, we learned that all the aspirations of finite individuals must be somehow met and made good in the ultimate Reality, though not necessarily in the form in 409which they are consciously entertained by the finite aspirant. ”

“ But, supposing the Infinite, we have an adequate cause. If these emotions, then, from whatever object or circumstance, be to prompt the mind beyond its prescribed limits, whether carrying it back to the primitive past, the incomprehensible beginning, or sending it into the future, to the unknown end, the ever-present Idea of the mighty Author of all these mysteries must still be implied, though we think not of it. ”

“ And all the solutions which have hitherto been propounded as answers to the problem, may be generalised into these two: either consciousness is able to transcend, or go beyond itself; or else the whole pomp, and pageantry, and magnificence, which we miscall the external universe, are nothing but our mental phantasmagoria, nothing but states of our poor, finite, subjective selves. ”

“ Thus instructed, in what condition do we find ourselves when we arrive at the age of maturity? Why, just in that divided state of mind, before described, in which the understanding is enlightened while the will is depraved; a state of opposition between the mind and the heart, between our convictions and our inclinations. This we all feel to be, in a greater or less degree, the case. ”

“ And this relatively external truth which is intended by the finite consciousness, and which is inclusive of all that at any instant this finite consciousness finds present to itself, is a truth whose Being can be neither of the realistic type, nor of the mystical type, nor of the merely valid type of Being, nor of any form except a conscious form, — a form whose existence includes and completes what the finite thinker at any moment undertakes to know. ”

“ But if, instead of yielding to the seductions of our metaphor, be it sentence, shower, or bird, we analyze more carefully the notion suggested by it that we are constituent parts of the absolute's eternal field of consciousness, we find grave difficulties arising. First, the difficulty I found with the mind-dust theory. If the absolute makes us by knowing us, how can we exist otherwise than as it knows us? But it knows each of us indivisibly from everything else. ”

“ We may indulge in assumptions concerning the infinite based upon our knowledge of the finite, or, rather, based upon the inflexible laws of our mental processes. We may say that there must be one all-pervading soul, not because we can form any conception whatsoever of the true nature of such a soul, but because the alternative hypothesis of many individual souls is utterly obnoxious to our reason. ”

“ If, instead of doing every thing carelessly, and letting all things around us fall into confusion, we compel ourselves to act with order and neatness, an orderly principle of the mind comes into activity, in an orderly form of ultimate life, and the disorderly principle, finding no form in the ultimate life for its activity, lies dormant on the circumference of the mind, and, unless there be a relapse into disorderly action, will lie there forever dormant. ”

“ Dear reader, which mind-picture, or eternalized thought, shall be real to you, — the material or the spiritual? Both Mental pictures. you cannot have. You are bringing out your own ideal. This ideal is either temporal or eternal. Either Spirit or matter is your model. If you try to have two models, then you practically have none. Like a pendulum in a clock, you will strike the ribs of matter, and be thrown back and forth, swinging forever between the real and the unreal. ”

“ That great need of man, the finite, which admits of embrace, they ignore. The finite which admits of progress and sublime toil, they do not think about. The indefinite, which is born from the human and divine combination of the infinite and the finite, escapes them. ”

“ It is eternally asserting itself afresh, through countless finite wills. Each one of these finite wills, as moral agent, builds its sense world, and finds, in this sense world, the manifestations of other agents. ”

“ But our finite passing consciousness is incomplete or inadequate to its own purposes not merely by lack of contents adequate to express its wholeness, but by reason of vagueness with regard to its own momentarily conscious purposes. The principal source of actual error, in finite consciousness, we have already found to be the indetermination of our purposes at any stage in their realization. Now the presupposition of our whole view is that the final expression of purpose is not merely complete as to its contents, but absolutely determinate as to what meaning these contents fulfil. ”